(4 minutes read)
- French and Chinese oil giants sealed a landmark US$10-billion deal to develop Uganda’s energy resources and build a vast regional oil pipeline
- The proposed megaproject had agitated environmental groups because of the fragile ecosystem through which the pipeline will pass through
- The Final Investment Decision was announced at a ceremony in Kampala by the heads of France’s TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
French and Chinese oil giants sealed a landmark US$10-billion deal to develop Uganda’s energy resources and build a vast regional oil pipeline. The proposed megaproject had agitated environmental groups because of the fragile ecosystem through which the pipeline will pass through.
The Final Investment Decision was announced at a ceremony in Kampala by the heads of France’s TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
The project aims to exploit the huge crude oil reserves at Lake Albert, a 160-kilometre (100-mile) natural border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The oil would be pumped from landlocked Uganda through a 1,443-kilometre (900-mile) heated pipeline. This will be the longest pipeline when completed. The pipeline will run through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga. Many feel that the proposed project will threaten livelihoods and fragile ecosystems in the heart of Africa.
The ceremony was also attended by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Tanzania’s Vice President Philip Mpango.
Lake Albert has an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude. Of which about 1.4 billion barrels are currently considered recoverable. In Uganda, the drilling is located in several natural reserves. One of which extends to Murchison Falls, the country’s largest national park. TotalEnergies, formerly Total, maintains that it had taken steps to reduce the project’s impact on people and the environment. But conservation groups do not agree to that and maintain that its impact would be devastating.
A consortium of Ugandan and French NGOs filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the French company accusing it of failing to abide by its legal obligations to protect the environment and the rights of the people. In December, the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, ruled that the case should be heard in a civil court rather than assigned to a commercial tribunal. The activists considered that this was an important victory.
